Twitter updates service to make it easier to follow conversations

Twitter this week announced it is updating its iPhone and Android apps, as well as Twitter.com, to make it easier to follow conversations on your timeline and join in on the exchange.

Tweets that are part of a conversation will now be shown in chronological order with up to three tweets in sequence in your timeline. If that's not enough, you'll be able to expand the conversation to see all the replies, including those from people you don't follow. Twitter said it is rolling out the new feature to all users immediately.

"From buzz about the VMAs to debates around upcoming football games, people come to Twitter to take part in these real-time, global, public conversations," Twitter product manager Jinen Kamdar wrote in a blog post. "To date, such exchanges haven't always been easy to follow."

The micro-blogging service is also making it easier to share conversations. With the latest version, you'll be able to do this via email, whether your friends are on Twitter or not. On iPhone and Android you can now share individual tweets over email, and on Android you can do so via direct messages.

Besides that, Twitter is bolstering security by letting you report individual tweets as abusive or spam from the Android app and Twitter.com. This feature is already available on the iPhone app and will be "gradually" rolling out to Android and the web.

Twitter has also made the Android app more accessible for entry-level smartphones with limited storage, like the Samsung Galaxy Y, HTC Explorer, and Micromax Bolt. For these devices, the app is now less than half its previous size, which should make it faster to download and install.

"We'll continue to work on improvements targeted at entry-level Android smartphones so that Twitter is more accessible to people everywhere around the world," Kamdar wrote.